​2016 was the year of the decal in my studio. Since starting to make pots at college in 2009 I've been eager (can you be eager for 7 years?) to learn a technique to reproduce my designs in some way faster than hand-painting. The first quarter of the year was spent testing, and throughout the following months I was able to replicate most of my designs as decals. I'm thrilled with the results; I often prefer the decal design to the previous hand-painted version! I've been upfront with my customers and galleries about this change, to my knowledge without issue. This post might be unnecessary - you might not be bothered how I decorate my pots and I wouldn't blame you for that - but I spent a long time trawling the internet to figure this technique out and find a good printer, so I'll dedicate this to aspiring decal-users. All three of them, somewhere out there on the internet...Hi!

​First, a definition. A decal is a specially prepared paper bearing a picture or design for transfer to wood, metal, glass, etc. In this case, the decals are digitally printed (rather than screen-printed) and suitable for glazed ceramics. Some people prefer to call them transfers.

I draw or paint my designs onto paper, scan them into Photoshop, tidy them up a little and arrange them to fill an A3 document. I can average 70 decals per sheet, depending on the size. That digital document is sent to the printer in Stoke-on-Trent, where it's printed and posted to me within a week.

​Each decal is hand-cut out of the sheet, soaked in warm water for 30 seconds to release the backing paper, place on the glazed pot and gently rubbed with a squeegee to remove air or water bubbles. ​The pots require a third firing, to 840C, to secure the decals.

​Whilst the point of developing decals was to have a more efficient decoration method, this technique still requires hours of work. The decals and pots pass through my hands many times. The decal positioning is more nuanced than I expected - I tried to hand over the job to my student helper, but even a few millimetres of angle can change the design significantly. Somewhat guiltily I do often pass on the job of cutting over to my helpers - thank you Katie and Hannah!​​Painting is my favourite part of the making process - always has been - but if I'm repeating the same illustration on 40 (or 60, or 80) pots I'm naturally going to get bored and frustrated. I would hate to start dreading the best part of the making process, so the decals help me to prevent that. Background colours are still hand-painted by me directly onto the clay, but most illustrations are now decals.

P.S. tech stuff: I'm using Magenta set decals over Sneyd Ceramics clear stoneware gloss glaze, fired to 840C with a 15 min soak. Currently 100C/h, but I'm probably being a wuss and should make it a faster firing. Okay, bye.